SSH-RAND-HELPER(8) System Manager's Manual SSH-RAND-HELPER(8)
NAME
ssh-rand-helper - Random number gatherer for OpenSSH
SYNOPSIS
ssh-rand-hlper [-vxXh] [-b bytes]
DESCRIPTION
ssh-rand-helper is a small helper program used by ssh(1), ssh-add(1),
ssh-agent(1), ssh-keygen(1), ssh-keyscan(1) and sshd(8) to gather random
numbers of cryptographic quality if the openssl(4) library has not been
configured to provide them itself.
Normally ssh-rand-helper will generate a strong random seed and provide
it to the calling program via standard output. If standard output is a
tty, ssh-rand-helper will instead print the seed in hexidecimal format
unless told otherwise.
ssh-rand-helper will by default gather random numbers from the system
commands listed in /etc/ssh/ssh_prng_cmds. The output of each of the
commands listed will be hashed and used to generate a random seed for the
calling program. ssh-rand-helper will also store seed files in
~/.ssh/prng_seed between executions.
Alternately, ssh-rand-helper may be configured at build time to collect
random numbers from a EGD/PRNGd server via a unix domain or localhost tcp
socket.
This program is not intended to be run by the end-user, so the few comM--
mandline options are for debugging purposes only.
-b bytes
Specify the number of random bytes to include in the output.
-x Output a hexidecimal instead of a binary seed.
-X Force output of a binary seed, even if standard output is a tty
-v Turn on debugging message. Multiple -v options will increase the
debugging level. -h Display a summary of options.
AUTHORS
Damien Miller
SEE ALSO
ssh(1), ssh-add(1), ssh-keygen(1), sshd(8)
BSD April 14, 2002 BSD